A633.8.3.RB - How do Coaches Help?

Ten years ago, most companies engaged a coach to help fix toxic behavior at the top. Today, most coaching is about developing the capabilities of high-potential performers. (Coutu & Kauffman, 2009)

Top 3 reasons coaches are engaged. Develop high potentials or to facilitate transitions. Act as sounding board or address derailing behavior. Companies may not hire coaches to attend to issues in an executive’s personal life, but more often than not, personal matters creep in.

There’s no question that future leaders will need constant coaching. As the business environment becomes more complex, they will increasingly turn to coaches for help in understanding how to act. The kind of coaches I am talking about will do more than influence behaviors; they will be an essential part of the leader’s learning process, providing knowledge, opinions, and judgment in critical areas. These coaches will be retired CEOs or other experts from universities, think tanks, and government.

Skilled coaches will be able to walk you through process. Those process should include helping you define your core challenges, see where you’re starting from, and where you want to go. It’s also essential that they can describe how you’ll learn new skills and behaviors, and how they’ll support you to transfer those skills back to work.

A good coach will tell you that his or her approach includes gathering feedback about you from those who work with you most and ‘patterning’ that feedback to draw a clear picture of how you’re seen by them, and then working with you to decide the areas where the two of you can have the greatest positive impact on how you’re viewed, your capabilities and your success. Good coaches will let you know that they can offer you useful new skills, awareness and knowledge, and help you integrate what you’ve learned into your day-to-day life.

Effective coaching enables leaders to be better at their jobs, and to create the future they want for themselves. Good coaches help leaders get clearer about how they can best contribute to their organization’s success, and then to achieve better results and become more highly promotable (if that’s what they want).

References

Coutu, D., & Kauffman, C. (2009, January). What Can Coaches Do for You? Retrieved from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2009/01

Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty. In N. Obolensky, Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (pp. 104-129). New York: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.